2024-25 NBA Season Discussion

[eminence]

I feel like you have to win at least one of those to say you outplayed the other person, and certainly if you want to claim any great delta like 19th peak vs 2nd.

I'm not sure one does if one isn't picking any of those seasons as peak Curry.

In '75 I strongly expect Marvin Barnes outplayed DrJ in the playoffs (at least evenish), but I don't see people having any problem with not ranking their peak seasons even close to one another.

Now if they pick '15/'18/'19 Curry as peak, then yeah, tough to justify that delta.

[lessthanjake]

The argument here seems to simultaneously be that we should look down on Steph compared to Harden when he outplays Harden individually but the series is very close (2018), but should also look down on Steph compared to Harden when Harden outplays Steph individually but the Warriors win the series relatively cleanly (2019). It seems like the angle is basically that we should look around and draw any possible negative inference we can about Steph Curry—whether that’s looking at individual stats (either in a whole series or just a specific portion of a series if the whole series data doesn’t support the point) or looking at an amorphous comparison of team results in a series compared to perceived talent on the team. Ultimately, Steph Curry absolutely dominated the Harden Rockets, unlike almost anything we’ve ever seen (Russell dominating West’s Lakers more, as did Jordan against Ewing’s Knicks, and perhaps a few other examples). I don’t think there’s much of a valid/reasonable way to look at those results and come to the conclusion that those series suggest Harden was as good or better than Steph. One could try to make some sort of nuanced argument using other information, but going for “Steph’s record against the Rockets in the playoffs shows he is overrated compared to Harden” is definitely a very hot take.

Honestly I wouldnt expect this kind of stuff from you
Was Isiah better than Jordan from 88-90? I guess in your world, yes? Since the other 8 guys don't count?

The gap in individual stats between Jordan and Isiah in those 1988–90 series makes this pretty clearly not a valid comparison. Yes, a star doesn’t necessarily outplay another star every time their team beat the other star’s team. But it’s a real bank shot to try to argue the opposite (i.e. that the results of the series suggest that the guy whose team consistently lost was better). Like, the argument that Jordan was better than Isiah in 1988-90 definitely doesn’t hinge on the results of the Pistons vs. Bulls series. Again, as I said, you can try to make some sort of argument for Harden using other information, but the results of the various Warriors vs. Rockets series—which the Warriors won every time—should not be the basis for it. In general, anytime someone is making an argument that is basically “Player A is better than Player B, because Player B had a better team and the playoff series between their teams was close” they’re arguing from a real place of weakness IMO.

Like how did Steph outplay harden in 2018. They have nearly identical game scores, indicating they were pretty close and Steph jumped up quite a bit once his nemesis cp3 was injured. Without that, he's almost certainly worse. Draymond was leading the warriors to the #1 defense in the playoffs, KD was scoring on volume and efficiency, the rockets weren't hitting 3s and Chris paul was at 20 ppg, 6 APG and 52 TS% so it's not like he was killing it. And clint capela was getting neutralized by Draymond. So now Steph was also outplaying harden but the series just mysteriously went 7 and maybe only because of a huge injury for Houston? You can't be the leader of the most talented team ever and be losing the series to what obviously isn't the most talented team ever but somehow it's not your fault.

A few things:

1. You mention Chris Paul not doing so well offensively, but don’t acknowledge that that occurred while the Rockets tried to put Steph in every action. Steph played substantially better defense than Harden, and that’s a significant factor here. If their game scores were close (with Steph a bit ahead) that’s a pretty good indicator that Steph was better in the series (especially if we also take into account the off-ball gravity stuff).

2. Steph Curry being so good is a huge reason they were “the most talented team ever.” Obviously, that’s not all of it. But the Warriors were considered that talented in significant part because they added Durant to a 73-win team, and the biggest reason they were a 73-win team is…because Steph was historically good. Saying the Warriors didn’t do as well as their talent would suggest is basically just internalizing how ridiculously good Steph was and then weaponizing that against him to try to get to a conclusion that he wasn’t ridiculously good.

3. Similar to the above, I think if the argument you have to make against Steph is that his team was “losing” a series that they ultimately won, then it’s pretty self-evident that there’s not much of a good argument against him. Similar thing when taking performance in a snippet of a playoff series rather than the entire thing. Those are the arguments people end up having to make when the whole picture doesn’t support their view.

4. That’s not even getting into the fact that there was absolutely no shame in having a tough series against a 65-win, 8.21 SRS team (that was even better than that when healthy) that had home-court advantage. Even the best teams in history have had difficulty with teams that are that good. Of course, the fact that the 2018 Rockets were that good is a testament to Harden, and personally that’s where I’d start if I were trying to make an argument for Harden’s peak being far underrated (more on that below). But trying to downplay Steph because his team struggled to get past a 65-win, 8.21 SRS team (which played like a 74-win team or something when healthy) without home-court advantage seems like obviously a very weak argument.

And in 2019 the delta between Steph and harden is crazy, 35/7/5 on 59 TS% vs 23/5/4 on 54 TS%. They aren't even close enough to compared. Everybody keeping Steph afloat for 5.5 out of 6 games is how they "cleanly" won a series where no game was decided by more than 6 points.

Yep, Harden was better than Steph overall in that series. Of course, Steph did come through with some heroics in the end. But Harden was better overall, even despite Steph’s better defense and massive off-ball gravity. But the Rockets lost the series, and also lost the other series those teams played against each other, with Harden not actually outplaying Steph in any other series they played in. If you want to make the narrow point that 2019 Harden > 2019 Steph, then that seems like a tenable argument. But 2019 isn’t Steph’s peak and 2019 is arguably Harden’s peak. And regardless, the bank shot of “One of these series was close, and in the other series Harden outplayed Steph, so these two series the Warriors won show that peak Harden was better than peak Steph” is pretty weak IMO.

All that said, while we agree on plenty, we’ve had *a lot* of past discussion about Steph (I think we went back and forth with very long posts about him in the last RealGM Top 100) and I know we have pretty intractable disagreements about him. I suspect you may have developed a strong dislike of a player/team that repeatedly defeated your team. And I’m sure you think I come at it from an equally biased view the other way. And ultimately it’s probably not worth going down a rabbit hole too much, since I suspect most anything we’d say on this has probably already been covered in our past discussions.

To move away from the Steph comparison specifically, I actually am pretty sympathetic to a view that Harden has been underrated in the ThinkingBasketball peaks list. As I alluded to above, I think the most impressive thing to me about Harden’s peak is not that the Rockets barely lost to the Warriors, but rather that the 2018 Rockets were historically good, particularly when healthy. That’s the thing that is the headline in my mind for an argument for Harden’s peak. That Rockets team was a 65-win, 8.21 SRS team that played at a 70+ win pace in games Harden and CP3 both played. And while CP3 is a great player, I do think that that reflects extremely well on Harden. To me, the fact that the Rockets barely lost to the Warriors (and only after CP3 got injured) largely just immunizes Harden from the “Yeah but his great regular season team turned out to not be nearly so good in the playoffs, so we shouldn’t take it all that seriously” argument. I don’t think we could say that their playoff loss proved they weren’t as good as their regular season indicated, given that they lost in 7 games to the Durant Warriors (after CP3 went down with the Rockets up 3-2). So, to me, we have Harden leading a historically great regular season team, which is not refuted by what happened in the playoffs. The counterargument to that probably then has to be that the 2019 Rockets were a similar team and not nearly so good, so maybe the 2018 Rockets were just lightning in a bottle. Not sure what my thoughts are on that, and if we are just talking about single-year peaks then maybe it doesn’t matter since we might choose 2018 Harden over 2019 Harden.

[DraymondGold]

I suspect Thinking Basketball is going to have LeBron on multiple times in the top 25 peaks project. Otherwise, it's hard to make a case that there's been 19 other players with better peaks than Harden.

It's absolutely 1 per player.

25. Kidd
24. Tatum
23. Green
22. Howard
21. Manu
20. Harden

Shaq, Duncan, KG, McGrady, Nash, Dirk, Kobe, LeBron, Wade, Chris Paul, Durant, Curry, Kawhi, Davis, Giannis, Jokic, Embiid, Luka, SGA the remaining 19 (not mentioned in the HMs and guys who absolutely would've been).

I do think Harden was very low, though not quite past what I'd call his 'I'll stop taking you seriously if you have a guy outside of this range' #.

McGrady/Davis/Embiid over Harden notably weak arguments imo.

Yeah, I think there’s probably roughly 5 or 6 guys that you list there that I’d have Harden above in terms of peaks (at least McGrady, Durant, Davis, and Luka, with a few others I’m on the fence about). So it’s a bit low on Harden IMO, but it’s not completely crazy, since I don’t really think there’s anyone there where it’s completely crazy to have them above Harden.

One thing to note on Harden that can get lost in the gut response to seeing the actual ranking ("How dare he rank Harden so low!?!??" says the Rockets fan) is the uncertainty range.

Thinking Basketball said at the beginning of the Harden discussion that their mean interpretation of their value had them in a "group of players" above Manu, with "a little bit of a jump" going from Manu to Harden. So even if they're ranked next to each other, and even if their most-favorable possible evaluation of Manu puts him ahead of Harden, his normal evaluation of Harden does have a gap between #21 Manu and #20 Harden. They don't say exactly how high they could get on Harden, but they do say a high-range evaluation would get him into the Top 15s range (so maybe 15th–12th or something like that?), and that a regular-season only list could have them 10 spots higher (Top 10, although it's unclear if this is the mean evaluation or high-end evaluation).

In terms of pros, they mention
-being possible top 10 offensive player all time (particularly in regular season and early playoffs), with the combined pressure of the scoring and playmaking
-being a great passer, particularly in the left hand, in pick and roll
-being one of the great foul drawers ever
-being one of the great three point shooters ever, and being potentially underrated at that aspect
-great use of tempo and craft and change of pace
-on defense, underrated post strength and hands... when he tries and is attentive on defense

They do spend some time discussing the pros, but I'll spend less time on summarizing them here, since I suspect people here are well aware of Harden's pros.

In terms of things they mention that make them lower than most, just to clarify the concerns, they mention...
-Playoff decline.
In a study of box stats (e.g. scoring volume, efficiency, assists, turnovers), Harden has perhaps largest drop-off going from games 1–3 in a playoff series to 4–7 of any player in the top ~25. They mention some of this is noise and tiny sample size, but it also reflects what they see on film, which is an ability to be schemed against more than the other top 20 peaks.

For instance, on film they see: a reliance on foul baiting being more easily schemed against as you go later in the playoffs, as opposing defenders get practice against it; refs tighten their whistles in the playoffs, which limits the value of seeking free throws; a reliance on isolation mismatch hunting becomes harder as defense quality improves later in the playoffs; Harden having a lower motor may make it harder for him to sustain his all-time offensive impact against harder defenses without a drop-off somewhere (on offense or defense); an increase in turnovers as more predictable style of offenses play multiple games against better defenses.

They say he does have great playoffs (e.g. 2018). But they also call out specific late series moments where he underperformed (2017 against kawhi-less Spurs; 2019 against Durant-less Warriors). So combining a late-series decline in box stats, a decline in the effectiveness of certain skills in their film analysis, and an underperformance that fits the perceived on-film decline in specific memorable moments, they think there is something real to the playoff decline.

-D'Antoni effect.
They mention that D'Antoni is a great coach, perhaps the best coach Harden could get to maximize the effectiveness of that Harden-ball style, and a coach who was a little ahead of his time in terms of three point volume and spacing and pace, and other strategic innovations like that. They say that LeBron would definitely be better playing the heliocentric style under D'Antoni, and that peak Steve Nash (at least offensively) and peak Chris Paul might be better in the system too.... whereas they wonder if Harden's reputation and box impact would decline in other systems under worse coaches.

-Concerning Defense
They point out despite his strengths on defense, he has a variety of concerning plays too, where his angles and positioning is off, where he lacks awareness to back cuts or players off ball, where he lacks effort to defend his man in isolation. For example, after a series of good defensive plays in 2019 Warriors vs Rockets game 5 (the key game where Durant went down), he had a defensive play where old Iguodala blows by him like he's not even there, while he's looking off in the distance at the stands... and that there were a number of head-scratching plays that lacked defensive effort/awareness as the game went on. They hypothesize this may relate to Harden's limited motor (as it takes a lot of energy, both physically and mentally, to play heliocentric ball).
They also call out plays where Harden fails to get back on defense, after complaining to refs about a non-call, which leads to opponent 5-on-4 transition opportunities. And they mention the team-building difficulties of having a player who's a poor defense... with only ~2/3 other players in the series having an argument for being worse defenders than Harden.

-Limited plus-minus impact of most stars in the heliocentric style.
They've said before that at least some of the most heliocentric stars lack as large of a plus minus impact signal as you'd expect compared to the incredible box signal, when playing the heliocentric style. For Harden, they've said before that his plus minus peak in the playoffs appears to come in his earlier years before he becomes so heliocentric (noting playoff plus minus is noisy).

In this podcast, they note his regular season ON/Off in peak 5-year stretches is roughly ~ +6.0 and his regular season ON peak is also ~ +6.0 from 2014–2018... which is pretty good! Definitely all-star/all-nba worthy. But definitely a drop from what you'd expect based on his box impact, which would suggest he's competing for best in world. (as above, notice this spans some of his non-heliocentric years rather than what they consider his true peak to be in 2018–2020... although they point out Chris Paul was playing backup for Harden in some of the 18/19 lineups may have damped some of his impact, and that he's more impactful if we look at the non-Paul lineups)

Speaking of Paul, when the Rockets had Chris Paul, they note Rockets had a better ON rating with Chris Paul Only > Harden + Paul > Harden only > neither. In particular, the defense drops off with Harden only. Now (healthy) Chris Paul is one of the great guards ever, so it's no shame for Harden. But looking worse in Harden + Paul minutes than Paul-only minutes is not particularly complementary to Harden's heliocentric plus-minus impact. And also indicates Harden may have negative scalability when playing alongside other offensive stars

...

Up to you how convincing these arguments are. I know f4p, for instance, has argued the perceived playoff decline is overrated (and that Harden actually is a great playoff performer if one looks at long enough samples of p.lus minus data... although peak vs prime comes into question as we look at longer samples). But those are the concerns they mentioned for why Harden's not like the ~10th best peak of the century. Personally, I definitely do have him higher than 20th, though I haven't counted exactly where. I do think D'Antoni was a great fit for Harden, but I have less concerns about lowering him because he was in a good scenario -- plenty of great players happened to be in a good scenario. But I do share some of the same concerns about playoff resilience, scalability, defense, and impact in a heliocentric role.

[Jaivl]

Leaving Harden aside for a moment, they call Ginóbili "probably the most underrated defender in NBA history".

Don't think he is -- cause I think the answer for almost every "most underrated X" is always gonna be a pre-80s guy (and he's not Ricky Rubio) -- but that's an opinion I hadn't heard before, and is probably true among this century's stars.

[f4p]

I feel like you have to win at least one of those to say you outplayed the other person, and certainly if you want to claim any great delta like 19th peak vs 2nd.

I'm not sure one does if one isn't picking any of those seasons as peak Curry.

In '75 I strongly expect Marvin Barnes outplayed DrJ in the playoffs (at least evenish), but I don't see people having any problem with not ranking their peak seasons even close to one another.

Now if they pick '15/'18/'19 Curry as peak, then yeah, tough to justify that delta.

I mean, how far could it possibly be from his peak? 2015 to 2019 seems like a pretty sustained peak somewhat like 2015 to 2020 or 2017 to 2020 for harden.

2015 and 2018 are pretty clearly his 2nd best regular seasons stats wise after 2016 and obviously he didn't follow through in the 2016 playoffs (or stay healthy in the series with harden). So unless his peak is specifically the first 60 games of 2016 and we aren't considering the playoffs, then he's within shouting distance of his peak. So if hardens ahead of that, then Stephs peak can't be that far ahead. Which has been my argument all along, not that one even has to take peak harden over peak Steph but that they can't be much more than a whisper apart.

[LukaTheGOAT]

Harden at 19 in ben modern peaks list is maybe too low

Since I’m guessing he’ll have Steph #2 (if he can keep himself from picking him #1), I’d love an honest to goodness explanation of the 2018 and 2019 rockets warriors series. Steph had another mvp in his prime and a DPOY and massive impact guy (who apparently makes any team a title favorite) and klay and RAPM standout iggy (half of 2018, all of 2019), and harden had the last prime season of massive impact cp3 and what…Clint capela and the two series were dead even. Like +2 for the warriors in non garbage time in 2018 games with cp3 and +1.7 in 2019 with cp3 a shell of himself. With a 6-5 record for the warriors.

These should be epic bloodbaths if harden is 19th. You simply can’t square the circle of the difference in rankings and the series results.

He won't have Steph higher than Lebron or Shaq, so definitely not #2. He might say Steph's high range can move him higher than Shaq, but he won't pull the trigger. Not sure if people who are saying Shaq won't be #2 understand how Ben weights Shaq's defensive impact in 2000. Now, he became materially higher on Manu in recent times, so opinions can change, but he already did a deep dive on Shaq on a few years ago so I doubt there would be significant change in his view.

Also, they are looking at single years, so I imagine 18 and 19 might not be as focused on, and he will do either 16 or 17. Kind of how like Lebron will definitely be #1, and he will pick 12 or 13, despite losing in 2011 with another MVP-caliber player on his team in Wade to a bunch of old heads on the Mavs. Scheme matters to Ben.

He literally wrote an article before the series in 2018 how GSW vs HOU should be competitive:

https://thinkingbasketball.net/page/44/

Some paragraphs that stick out:

"Golden State hasn’t manhandled Houston though. In the last two seasons when James Harden has played, the teams have split six games, with Golden State outscoring Houston by a mere 3.2 points per contest. In Houston, the Warriors outscored the Rockets by 5.3 points. Houston shot only 30 percent from deep in those games, slightly below their norm, which could be an indicator Golden State defends them well. Or it could be basic variance: Against top-three defenses this season, Houston shot 36 percent from downtown in 10 games with a polished 115 offensive rating. "


"The only time Golden State has dropped a series in the last four seasons was after Curry sprained his MCL and they ran into an offensive juggernaut led by an on-ball wizard. Houston has two. They own home court advantage, and more of the recent numbers point toward them winning the series. I worry about the Warriors defense with Green on the bench. I can certainly see Houston winning, and consider this a close matchup (sorry Sir Charles).

Yet even without home-court, I favor Golden State. Their two-year stretch is comparable to Houston’s single-year dominance, only they’ve demonstrated more robustness in their attack by shredding almost every playoff opponent and high-end team in their path. Sometimes, games boil down to who can chip at their opponents go-to options, and I see Golden State zapping a bit more off of Harden and their roll action than Houston’s defense shaves off the Warriors buzzsaw.

Either way, this series should be incredibly entertaining."

I feel as if he also had something in 2011 on how the Mavs thoroughly outplayed Miami throughout the season, and that the Mavs shouldn't be considered the underdogs they were, but I can't find it.

[LukaTheGOAT]

Also, I understand if you believe Harden is being underrated, and isn't very far from Steph. But I also there are some guys he lost higher spots to that you would be remiss to mention. These guys especially because I think putting Harden>them would be more palatable to the typical nerd.

Those spot stealers are the new guys who are maybe the biggest allegories to Harden's style of play:

My lovely Luka, who is better, but doesn't have the RS brilliance of Harden.

Another is SGA, as I don't see him being a better offensive engine, and thus him being higher really has to come from the defensive edge.

Maybe McGrady because of confidence in the 03 year being real?

[Peregrine01]

Really struggling to see why Thinking Basketball had TMac over Harden in terms of peaks. They themselves struggled to say much positive about him in this episode.

[lessthanjake]

Really struggling to see why Thinking Basketball had TMac over Harden in terms of peaks. They themselves struggled to say much positive about him in this episode.

Yeah McGrady was the one where it seemed most obvious to me that he shouldn’t be above Harden. I think there’s a few other guys that they have (or will have) ahead of Harden that I wouldn’t. For instance, Durant and Luka. But those seem fairly defensible, even if I’d disagree. McGrady above Harden is not completely crazy, I guess, but it’s pretty close to it IMO.

[Djoker]

Harden is certainly more consistent. If we compare say 5-year stretches, Harden blows T-Mac out of the water but for 1-year peaks, 2003 T-Mac was a pretty insane peak. Not only was he a ridiculous offensive player and a more resilient playoff performer than Harden but he was a strong defender as well. It's honestly not hard for me to see T-Mac > Harden at all. In fact, I'd probably lean that way myself.

[Peregrine01]

Harden is certainly more consistent. If we compare say 5-year stretches, Harden blows T-Mac out of the water but for 1-year peaks, 2003 T-Mac was a pretty insane peak. Not only was he a ridiculous offensive player and a more resilient playoff performer than Harden but he was a strong defender as well. It's honestly not hard for me to see T-Mac > Harden at all. In fact, I'd probably lean that way myself.

I’d take a whole bunch of Harden years over TMac’s 2003. If a criticism about Harden is that he tails off a lot toward the end of playoff series then TMac tailed off big time against the Pistons in 2003 as well.

[Djoker]

Harden is certainly more consistent. If we compare say 5-year stretches, Harden blows T-Mac out of the water but for 1-year peaks, 2003 T-Mac was a pretty insane peak. Not only was he a ridiculous offensive player and a more resilient playoff performer than Harden but he was a strong defender as well. It's honestly not hard for me to see T-Mac > Harden at all. In fact, I'd probably lean that way myself.

I’d take a whole bunch of Harden years over TMac’s 2003. If a criticism about Harden is that he tails off a lot toward the end of playoff series then TMac tailed off big time against the Pistons in 2003 as well.

T-Mac's team was so bad that he could have been swept 0-4 by 15 points a game and nobody should have betted an eye. He put up an absolutely fantastic series on that Pistons team, poor shooting Game 5 and Game 7 non-withstanding. I think you are overlooking just how freaking bad that 2003 Magic roster was.

Harden meanwhile lost multiple very winnable series against worse defenses just disappearing in big moments over and over again. That never happened with T-Mac. And defensively, T-Mac has a pretty significant edge. It's close. I'm not saying it's a slam dunk. With Harden we have multiyear data which gives him a narrower range. It's not crazy to take Harden but for 1-year peaks prior to the back problems starting, I'd lean T-Mac for resiliency and defense.

[Peregrine01]

Harden is certainly more consistent. If we compare say 5-year stretches, Harden blows T-Mac out of the water but for 1-year peaks, 2003 T-Mac was a pretty insane peak. Not only was he a ridiculous offensive player and a more resilient playoff performer than Harden but he was a strong defender as well. It's honestly not hard for me to see T-Mac > Harden at all. In fact, I'd probably lean that way myself.

I’d take a whole bunch of Harden years over TMac’s 2003. If a criticism about Harden is that he tails off a lot toward the end of playoff series then TMac tailed off big time against the Pistons in 2003 as well.

T-Mac's team was so bad that he could have been swept 0-4 by 15 points a game and nobody should have betted an eye. He put up an absolutely fantastic series on that Pistons team, poor shooting Game 5 and Game 7 non-withstanding. I think you are overlooking just how freaking bad that 2003 Magic roster was.

Harden meanwhile lost multiple very winnable series against worse defenses just disappearing in big moments over and over again. That never happened with T-Mac. And defensively, T-Mac has a pretty significant edge. It's close. I'm not saying it's a slam dunk. With Harden we have multiyear data which gives him a narrower range. It's not crazy to take Harden but for 1-year peaks prior to the back problems starting, I'd lean T-Mac for resiliency and defense.

TMac has a defensive edge but I never got the sense that he was anything more than a marginally positive impact defender during his Orlando years. On offense, he was very much a jump shooter and could never pressure the paint or distort defenses with the pick and roll like Harden could. Now, some of this is due to how much smaller the court was back then but when pushed to choose, TMac preferred to settle for tough jumpers than get to the rack compared to contemporaries like Kobe or AI. I suspect a lot of this was due to his relatively low revving motor and lack of shiftiness or quickness.

[Djoker]

I’d take a whole bunch of Harden years over TMac’s 2003. If a criticism about Harden is that he tails off a lot toward the end of playoff series then TMac tailed off big time against the Pistons in 2003 as well.

T-Mac's team was so bad that he could have been swept 0-4 by 15 points a game and nobody should have betted an eye. He put up an absolutely fantastic series on that Pistons team, poor shooting Game 5 and Game 7 non-withstanding. I think you are overlooking just how freaking bad that 2003 Magic roster was.

Harden meanwhile lost multiple very winnable series against worse defenses just disappearing in big moments over and over again. That never happened with T-Mac. And defensively, T-Mac has a pretty significant edge. It's close. I'm not saying it's a slam dunk. With Harden we have multiyear data which gives him a narrower range. It's not crazy to take Harden but for 1-year peaks prior to the back problems starting, I'd lean T-Mac for resiliency and defense.

TMac has a defensive edge but I never got the sense that he was anything more than a marginally positive impact defender during his Orlando years. On offense, he was very much a jump shooter and could never pressure the paint or distort defenses with the pick and roll like Harden could. Now, some of this is due to how much smaller the court was back then but when pushed to choose, TMac preferred to settle for tough jumpers than get to the rack compared to contemporaries like Kobe or AI. I suspect a lot of this was due to his relatively low revving motor and lack of shiftiness or quickness.

How do you figure he couldn't pressure the defense like Harden? T-Mac in Orlando has very good impact numbers. He clearly elevated that team's offense a lot and with extremely weak supporting pieces. And for the record I agree he was only a slight positive on D due to a high offensive load but that's still a large step up over Harden who a negative on D.

[Peregrine01]

T-Mac's team was so bad that he could have been swept 0-4 by 15 points a game and nobody should have betted an eye. He put up an absolutely fantastic series on that Pistons team, poor shooting Game 5 and Game 7 non-withstanding. I think you are overlooking just how freaking bad that 2003 Magic roster was.

Harden meanwhile lost multiple very winnable series against worse defenses just disappearing in big moments over and over again. That never happened with T-Mac. And defensively, T-Mac has a pretty significant edge. It's close. I'm not saying it's a slam dunk. With Harden we have multiyear data which gives him a narrower range. It's not crazy to take Harden but for 1-year peaks prior to the back problems starting, I'd lean T-Mac for resiliency and defense.

TMac has a defensive edge but I never got the sense that he was anything more than a marginally positive impact defender during his Orlando years. On offense, he was very much a jump shooter and could never pressure the paint or distort defenses with the pick and roll like Harden could. Now, some of this is due to how much smaller the court was back then but when pushed to choose, TMac preferred to settle for tough jumpers than get to the rack compared to contemporaries like Kobe or AI. I suspect a lot of this was due to his relatively low revving motor and lack of shiftiness or quickness.

How do you figure he couldn't pressure the defense like Harden? T-Mac in Orlando has very good impact numbers. He clearly elevated that team's offense a lot and with extremely weak supporting pieces. And for the record I agree he was only a slight positive on D due to a high offensive load but that's still a large step up over Harden who a negative on D.

The 2017-2019 Rockets were either 1 or 2 in ORTG every year. In 2020 with a fair mess of a roster, the Rockets managed 6th. TMac never led an offense that good either in his prime with those Magic teams or next to Yao (who was a better offensive player than TMac by then). Of course, a lot of this is attributable to D'Antoni and the spread offense. But you still need the on-ball maestro to do all of that.

TMac has never shown that he can lift an offense to the levels that Harden has and he has the same kind of playoff flameouts that Harden is frequently criticized for. Any defensive advantage that TMac has is pretty small in comparison to the offensive advantage that Harden has IMO.

[ShotCreator]

It's absolutely 1 per player.

25. Kidd
24. Tatum
23. Green
22. Howard
21. Manu
20. Harden

Shaq, Duncan, KG, McGrady, Nash, Dirk, Kobe, LeBron, Wade, Chris Paul, Durant, Curry, Kawhi, Davis, Giannis, Jokic, Embiid, Luka, SGA the remaining 19 (not mentioned in the HMs and guys who absolutely would've been).

I do think Harden was very low, though not quite past what I'd call his 'I'll stop taking you seriously if you have a guy outside of this range' #.

McGrady/Davis/Embiid over Harden notably weak arguments imo.

Yeah, I think there’s probably roughly 5 or 6 guys that you list there that I’d have Harden above in terms of peaks (at least McGrady, Durant, Davis, and Luka, with a few others I’m on the fence about). So it’s a bit low on Harden IMO, but it’s not completely crazy, since I don’t really think there’s anyone there where it’s completely crazy to have them above Harden.

One thing to note on Harden that can get lost in the gut response to seeing the actual ranking ("How dare he rank Harden so low!?!??" says the Rockets fan) is the uncertainty range.

Thinking Basketball said at the beginning of the Harden discussion that their mean interpretation of their value had them in a "group of players" above Manu, with "a little bit of a jump" going from Manu to Harden. So even if they're ranked next to each other, and even if their most-favorable possible evaluation of Manu puts him ahead of Harden, his normal evaluation of Harden does have a gap between #21 Manu and #20 Harden. They don't say exactly how high they could get on Harden, but they do say a high-range evaluation would get him into the Top 15s range (so maybe 15th–12th or something like that?), and that a regular-season only list could have them 10 spots higher (Top 10, although it's unclear if this is the mean evaluation or high-end evaluation).

In terms of pros, they mention
-being possible top 10 offensive player all time (particularly in regular season and early playoffs), with the combined pressure of the scoring and playmaking
-being a great passer, particularly in the left hand, in pick and roll
-being one of the great foul drawers ever
-being one of the great three point shooters ever, and being potentially underrated at that aspect
-great use of tempo and craft and change of pace
-on defense, underrated post strength and hands... when he tries and is attentive on defense

They do spend some time discussing the pros, but I'll spend less time on summarizing them here, since I suspect people here are well aware of Harden's pros.

In terms of things they mention that make them lower than most, just to clarify the concerns, they mention...
-Playoff decline.
In a study of box stats (e.g. scoring volume, efficiency, assists, turnovers), Harden has perhaps largest drop-off going from games 1–3 in a playoff series to 4–7 of any player in the top ~25. They mention some of this is noise and tiny sample size, but it also reflects what they see on film, which is an ability to be schemed against more than the other top 20 peaks.

For instance, on film they see: a reliance on foul baiting being more easily schemed against as you go later in the playoffs, as opposing defenders get practice against it; refs tighten their whistles in the playoffs, which limits the value of seeking free throws; a reliance on isolation mismatch hunting becomes harder as defense quality improves later in the playoffs; Harden having a lower motor may make it harder for him to sustain his all-time offensive impact against harder defenses without a drop-off somewhere (on offense or defense); an increase in turnovers as more predictable style of offenses play multiple games against better defenses.

They say he does have great playoffs (e.g. 2018). But they also call out specific late series moments where he underperformed (2017 against kawhi-less Spurs; 2019 against Durant-less Warriors). So combining a late-series decline in box stats, a decline in the effectiveness of certain skills in their film analysis, and an underperformance that fits the perceived on-film decline in specific memorable moments, they think there is something real to the playoff decline.

-D'Antoni effect.
They mention that D'Antoni is a great coach, perhaps the best coach Harden could get to maximize the effectiveness of that Harden-ball style, and a coach who was a little ahead of his time in terms of three point volume and spacing and pace, and other strategic innovations like that. They say that LeBron would definitely be better playing the heliocentric style under D'Antoni, and that peak Steve Nash (at least offensively) and peak Chris Paul might be better in the system too.... whereas they wonder if Harden's reputation and box impact would decline in other systems under worse coaches.

-Concerning Defense
They point out despite his strengths on defense, he has a variety of concerning plays too, where his angles and positioning is off, where he lacks awareness to back cuts or players off ball, where he lacks effort to defend his man in isolation. For example, after a series of good defensive plays in 2019 Warriors vs Rockets game 5 (the key game where Durant went down), he had a defensive play where old Iguodala blows by him like he's not even there, while he's looking off in the distance at the stands... and that there were a number of head-scratching plays that lacked defensive effort/awareness as the game went on. They hypothesize this may relate to Harden's limited motor (as it takes a lot of energy, both physically and mentally, to play heliocentric ball).
They also call out plays where Harden fails to get back on defense, after complaining to refs about a non-call, which leads to opponent 5-on-4 transition opportunities. And they mention the team-building difficulties of having a player who's a poor defense... with only ~2/3 other players in the series having an argument for being worse defenders than Harden.

-Limited plus-minus impact of most stars in the heliocentric style.
They've said before that at least some of the most heliocentric stars lack as large of a plus minus impact signal as you'd expect compared to the incredible box signal, when playing the heliocentric style. For Harden, they've said before that his plus minus peak in the playoffs appears to come in his earlier years before he becomes so heliocentric (noting playoff plus minus is noisy).

In this podcast, they note his regular season ON/Off in peak 5-year stretches is roughly ~ +6.0 and his regular season ON peak is also ~ +6.0 from 2014–2018... which is pretty good! Definitely all-star/all-nba worthy. But definitely a drop from what you'd expect based on his box impact, which would suggest he's competing for best in world. (as above, notice this spans some of his non-heliocentric years rather than what they consider his true peak to be in 2018–2020... although they point out Chris Paul was playing backup for Harden in some of the 18/19 lineups may have damped some of his impact, and that he's more impactful if we look at the non-Paul lineups)

Speaking of Paul, when the Rockets had Chris Paul, they note Rockets had a better ON rating with Chris Paul Only > Harden + Paul > Harden only > neither. In particular, the defense drops off with Harden only. Now (healthy) Chris Paul is one of the great guards ever, so it's no shame for Harden. But looking worse in Harden + Paul minutes than Paul-only minutes is not particularly complementary to Harden's heliocentric plus-minus impact. And also indicates Harden may have negative scalability when playing alongside other offensive stars

...

Up to you how convincing these arguments are. I know f4p, for instance, has argued the perceived playoff decline is overrated (and that Harden actually is a great playoff performer if one looks at long enough samples of p.lus minus data... although peak vs prime comes into question as we look at longer samples). But those are the concerns they mentioned for why Harden's not like the ~10th best peak of the century. Personally, I definitely do have him higher than 20th, though I haven't counted exactly where. I do think D'Antoni was a great fit for Harden, but I have less concerns about lowering him because he was in a good scenario -- plenty of great players happened to be in a good scenario. But I do share some of the same concerns about playoff resilience, scalability, defense, and impact in a heliocentric role.

I’m not buying the idea that Harden faded in the 2019 series. My perception was the complete opposite, his dribble moves got to their absolute peak level by that point. Iguodala was clueless defending him on the ball.

GS was at his mercy.

Them using multiple years to judge peak Harden is a mistake as well IMO.

Things change. Harden was a guy over dribbling and hunting triple doubles in 2017. I truly think he got concussed and played anyway in game 6 in San Antonio, and my hunch seems justified after we saw him hobble out there against Milwaukee in 2021 when he was weeks away from being ready to play.

Now, the 2017 point is a lesser one but I do believe the **** he took at the end of game 5 against SA rocked him badly.

But in general, once Harden’s reps of isolations got beyond a point where any defense would reasonably have reps in defending his style(Meaning Harden had probably over 700 isolations in 2019, the average defense isn’t running a 3P-line double team scheme on a ball handler more than 100 times a season), he was completely different. That and his use of the straight away and step back 3 in isolation.


And he cleaned his worst defensive habits up in the middle of 2018.

2020 Harden is his true peak IMO. But it did take a while to get there. Lumping a year like 2017 in is just unnecessary and loses the plot. Harden got better every year across all statistics from 2016 to 2019. Adding new things every single season on both ends.

Having both Curry and Durant tiered over him is indefensible to me for reasons people have mentioned ITT. Specifically that 2019 series.

I do agree, Durant was sabotaging certain actions. I 100% believe this is why GSW beat Houston without him. People don’t even realize, Houston was on their way to winning in game 5 until KD went down. They had a relatively big lead, late, and was on a run up until that calf strain.


Durant wasn’t boxing out, generally wasn’t disruptive on defense, and the flow of the offense was optional for him. He was happy to isolate.

And the craziest thing I remember about this was, Durant’s on/off rating was HIGH in the 2019 playoffs, until he went down. Then it plummeted. And GSW overall playoff performance was roughly the same without him. They were better on defense, and Curry/Klay/Dray all played better on offense in their natural roles. A lot can be learned about a lot of the players in this peaks list by looking at those 2019 playoffs.


Durant had the same bad habits in his peak years. 207 Durant might be his most team-friendly season ever by for sure. Whether or not it’s his peak is another discussion. But every other year of his career there’s the same underestimated ball monopolizing(without elite passing to offset it), and underwhelming defensive presence considering how athletic and long he was.

By the way, Draymond peaked higher than McGrady. Not relevant to your post but I feel it strongly enough to post it.

[Jaivl]

TMac has never shown that he can lift an offense to the levels that Harden has and he has the same kind of playoff flameouts that Harden is frequently criticized for. Any defensive advantage that TMac has is pretty small in comparison to the offensive advantage that Harden has IMO.

I mean, true, but when has McGrady played with anything even remotely resembling relevant offensive talent?

2020 Harden is his true peak IMO. But it did take a while to get there. Lumping a year like 2017 in is just unnecessary and loses the plot. Harden got better every year across all statistics from 2016 to 2019. Adding new things every single season on both ends.

Yes. Which makes the McGrady selection, the definition of a 1 year isolated peak, all the more baffling.

[parsnips33]

It's crazy to hear them talk about there's not much footage available of TMac's peak. I mean this is in the 21st century, I just assumed it'd be easy enough to find.

[Special_Puppy]

Ben putting Harden 19 is still insane.